From 2012.igem.org

HUMAN PRACTICES

Even though Synbio is an important trend in biotechnology, one that will probably have major impact in our society, the general public in Brazil still knows very little about of it. In order to spread the word about Synbio, we have created the Biology Synthetic Club, which became the basis of this iGEM team.

One of our major efforts was to create a resource where people could find reliable information about Synbio in Portuguese. That´s how the SynBio Brasil blog [http://scienceblogs.com.br/synbiobrasil/] was created and soon incorporated to the largest community of science blogs in Portuguese: ScienceBlogs Brasil [http://scienceblogs.com.br/]. The blog has been viewed more than 10,000 times since January 2012 and remains one of the only resources about SynBio in Portuguese.

Besides the blog, the team has organized lectures and meetings, that were streamed online, where student, professors and interested people at university could share ideas. We discussed about synthetic biology and potential projects for the iGEM competition.

The team has also raised money to register in this competition using crowdfunding [http://www.rockethub.com/projects/6131-brazil-s-igem-team-registration/about]. As it was the first scientific crowdfunded project in Brazil, it has arisen a lot of media attention. Our team was intervied by the largest media organizations, thus arising awareness about SynBio in Brazil [http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ciencia/1097202-cientistas-da-usp-conseguem-financiar-projeto-com-vaquinha-virtual.shtml][http://g1.globo.com/jornal-da-globo/noticia/2012/05/brasileiros-aderem-vaquinha-eletronica-para-realizar-projetos.html][http://revistapiaui.estadao.com.br/blogs/questoes-da-ciencia/geral/de-grao-em-grao].

The beginning

Our time was started by the researcher Mateus Lopes from ICB-USP, which couldn't continuum in the group as a leader and became a collaborator. After a while the group became a student initiative, headed by two graduate students (Marcelo Boareto and Edgar Andrés Ochoa C.) and one undergraduate student (Otto Heringer).

The researcher Mateus Lopes also created the Biology Synthetic Club, which was adopted by Otto Heringer. This Club became a multidisciplinary group. Our goal is to create a space that could be used for publishing and discussing about synthetic biology in Brazil. It also aims to keep the university participating in the iGEM competition. The Club developed the Synbio Brasil blog, which is an important tool for teaching and explaining synthetic biology research in Portuguese.

This is the first team of São Paulo University (USP) and the third time that Brazil participates in the iGEM competition. The projects were important not only for training students in the synthetic biology field, but also to improve our theoretical and practical knowledge.

We divided the team in two wet laboratory groups, each one dedicated to one of the projects, and a third group in charged of the mathematical modelling for both projects. Each group had a graduate student (Luiza Lane de Barros Dantas, Edgar Andrés Ochoa C. and Marcelo Boareto) leading the undergraduated students, most of the undergraduate students had no practical experience in molecular biology. It was a wonderful experience that allowed to introduce the students in the molecular biology and synthetic biology world.

The iGEM competition led us to put together people from five laboratories (four at USP university and one at UNESP university) that want to work in synthetic biology, an almost unknown field in Braszil. This laboratories leaded by Carlos Takeshi Hotta, Marie Anne Van Sluys, Nestor Caticha, José Gregório Cabrera Gomez and Cleslei Fernando Zanelli are pretty interested in lead this area in Brazil.... this is just the beginning...